Quick Comment

If we want to make some assumptions about the accuracy of Smite Builder, let's at least verify a couple of points.

When calculating DPS, it's the product of basic attack damage & attack speed. Looking at these individual values, attack speed is only important when calculating DPS, so it's probably best that we first confirm accuracy of the damage of a single basic attack. Agreed?

For this, since Smite Builder doesn't have an option to include Starter items (like Hunter's Blessing), we'll eliminate that from the equation and just look at full items.

Agni has 63 physical protections and 1,780 health at level 20. I'm not calculating him with any additional health or protections from items. This represents a generally squishy god.

You'll see Hercules in the pictures, but I'm not going to run calculations on him.

Athena has 164 physical protections and 3,100 health. Since Cern has 4 items, I'm giving her 4 items as well. She has Shoes of Focus, Gauntlet of Thebes (max stacks), Sovereignty, and Void Stone. 3,100 might seem like a lot of health, but I can confirm via Smite Wiki that her health progression is 500 +100 per level (so, 600 health at level 1, 2,500 health at level 20). This represents a pretty tanky god with extra health.

Okay. So we have to look at several different things to calculate the damage from a basic hit:

And here's where I find a Smite Builder mistake. Devo's is the specific culprit. It SHOULD apply 58 power at max stacks, but is actually showing 65. For the sake of ease of calculation, I adjusted the stacks in SB to 55, which provides the power contribution it SHOULD provide.

Mitigation from protectionsfor the specific enemy

For Qin's, additional damage from the passive, with mitigation factored in

For Exe, adjusted mitigationfrom reduced protections

So I don't have to consider both 0 and max stacks, I'm just going to compare with max stacks of Exe. If Qin's can beat out max stacks, it's no contest, right?

Actual Calculations to verify Basic Attack Damage: Qin's Against Agni

So let's look at Agni first. He's got 63 physical protections (-10 from Ichaival) and 1,780 health. At this point, for Qin's passive, his health doesn't hit the low end, so the additional damage will be a straight 3% before mitigations.

Now comes the fun (not fun) calculations section using The Word of Thoth. I won't list the formula.

Total damage including Qin's = 88.98 + 61 = 149.98, or rounded, 150 damage per basic. Damage given to Athena states 126 per basic on SB. SB damage value with Qin's bonus damage UNDERVALUED against Athena.

So this makes it REALLY interesting. I figured out what SB is doing incorrectly. It's not upscaling the % bonus damage...it's only kept it at a flat 3%. See: 3,100 * 0.03 = 93. 39.4% of 93 is 36.64. 36.64 + 88.98 = 125.6. SB damage value with Qin's bonus damage at only 3% instead of 5% reads 126.

This gives further potential weight to comparisons to The Executioner, which I'll calculate now.

SB Picture w/ Qin's

Anyway, now we'll confirm the Exe values, using only a fully stacked Exe, and see how they stand up to Qin's. We'll look again at both Agni and Athena. This means our pen value is 36% + flat 10.

Again, Agni has 1,780 health and 63 protections. After the 36% + 10 calc, his actual protection is 30.

216 base damage. 30 armor. I calculate 166.15 damage. This is 76.92% of original damage, or 23.08% mitigation.

Since I don't have to calculate anything further, we can compare this with what SB states...and it is in fact the same...166 damage per basic.

As for Athena, again she has 3,100 health and 164 protections. After the 36% + 10 calc, her actual protection is 95.

216 base damage. 95 armor. I calculate 110.77 damage. This is 51.28% of original damage, or 48.72% mitigation.

SB states...111 damage per basic. Those values are consistent with my calculations.

SB Picture w/ Exe

With all of this stated, we can assume that the stated values are accurate.

Single basic hits:

Qin's vs. Agni: 183

Exe (full stacks) vs. Agni: 166

Qin's vs. Athena*: 150 (*remember, SB is actually only using 3% in its calculation...)

Exe (full stacks) vs. Athena: 111

Based on these values, I can basically guarantee without doing AS calculations that Qin's is straight up superior to Exe. BUT...I'll do two AS calculations just to confirm a couple of the SB stated DPS values.

DPS - Exe vs. Athena:
I'm just going to make this really easy. Cern's AS is 1.98. (111 damage/hit) * (1.98 hits/second) = 219.78, so we can see exactly why SB states 220 DPS.

DPS - Qin's vs. Athena:
Now here is where it's going to be a bit more interesting to see...because SB isn't even accurate with this value. Cern's AS is 1.88. (150 damage/hit) * (1.88 hits/second) = 282 DPS.

As such, I straight up stand by my conclusion that Qin's provides the better DPS across the board. Perhaps the ONLY situation where you might see similar Qin's and Exe values is against a very tanky god that builds 0 extra health.

Unless I've made some grievous errors in calculations, the people that commented on Reddit are basically 1) assuming things, and 2) not doing any calculations themselves.

Anyway, I did finally find out that Qin's Sais offers more basic attack damage (not sure about dps though as Exe has more attack speed) at least against a level 15 Ra. However, the item is more expensive than The Executioner and offers less advantage for physical teammates. I will swap the ordering around, though I feel either can be bought first.

Has titans bane been changed where it can be built together with executioner? In the past, multiple stacks of exe would give diminishing returns on tb. Is this still the case?
If not, the only time i would suggest this setup is if multiple enemies are building double physical defense.

Nothing's really changed, TB still sees diminished effect when built with Exe. That said, it's just a percentage, not fully rendered ineffective, and combined, offers extremely high pen against tanks. And with most Supps and Solos usually building full tank, it can be very effective. It is of course situational.

FYI, if you do build 1 and do in fact get Ichaival as a bridge, I believe your better DPS option immediately after is Qin's Sais. It will provide more personal damage to both tanks and squishies at that point, especially due to having 3 sources of attack speed (Blessing, Ninja, Ichaival). Granted, it costs more, but I think it's probably worth the 350 extra gold over The Executioner.

Are you sure? I mean you only get 10 penetration from Ichaival, so I doubt Qin's Sais will be that effective against tanks without The Executioner, especially since they are likely to have a lot more health by the time you get it after The Executioner making the passive of Qin's Sais more effective. After all, there seems to be a reason that every pro gets Qin's Sais after The Executioner. Also the cost means you are at a disadvantage in lane against the enemy adc as they will have a full item before you.

At full Exe stacks, DPS is almost equal, though if you're being technical, Qin's wins out even there. At 0 Exe stacks, Qin's is just straight up superior. Better overall DPS at that stage against both squishies and tanks.

There are probably multiple reasons why pros might get Exe. Stacks mean phys teammates also deal higher damage. 350 gold cheaper of course. And maybe in some cases they're just stuck in their old ways.

To me, I doubt 350 gold is going to make a huge difference for most people at regular skill level, unless you're backing and have just enough for Exe but not Qin's. At that point, I'd probably just get Exe. But if I back and I have enough for Qin's, I think that's the way to go.

(I do want to note, these values were all WITHOUT Hunter's Blessing, since Smite Builder doesn't have it available as an item. With even higher attack speed, I believe Qin's at that stage will win out even further compared to Exe)

No, I don't know what level they'll be when they get either Qin's or Exe. I just chose 15 because. But here are values if looking at level 20 (where you might expect higher base protections would have a greater effect for Exe):

That's the thing though... Smite builder is calculating the actual damage Qin's does with the passive, specifically against tanks. I gave you the breakdown and you can see the values are different. It is calculating the reduced damage the passive does due to protections of a specific enemy, and it is in fact outworking Exe at that stage... At least as far as I can tell with all the calcs.

Basically, Qin's IS doing more damage even against tanks.

You should set up some tanks in your smite builder to see. (also I don't know if you know how you have to manipulate the program to show exe stacks... I can explain if you need)

I tried it again with Exe passive set to 3 and it's still showing exe build as higher dps, which makes sense as Qin's Sais has reduced effectiveness as the target's base physical protections is higher. (Copy and paste full link).

I'm not seeing that at all. I'm seeing Cern's DPS values are higher with Qin's...lol. Maybe we're not looking at the same thing?

You should have multiple gods set up, as I normally do. Make a squishy, and a couple different levels of tank.

The section you want to look at is "Damage Given," and you can use the DPS values taken. There are 3 values for each god...grey fist is regular basic, red fist is if you WERE to crit with that basic, and yellow is the actual average (incorporates ACTUAL crit chance and averages it out). Since Cern doesn't have any crit, the grey and yellow fists have the same values.

Qin's

Now...with regard to adjusting the system to account for stacks of The Executioner, you're doing that with the gods you're attacking. So you have to go individually into each god's tab, go down to the "buffs and debuffs" area, and add the 3 stacks of The Executioner.

Exe No Stacks

Exe w/ 3 Stacks

It clearly shows to me that even at max stacks of Exe, Qin's is doing enough higher damage per hit to beat out the slightly higher attack speed when getting Exe.

I'm doing another comment right now to see if I can verify that the damage calc from Qin's is reflecting accurately. That should tell if these numbers hold up overall.

I do want to point out a couple things here. Using calculations at level 20 should be fine...you're doing theoretical calculations, and so you're really evaluating hard numbers of basic attack damage and attack speed...not the in-game consideration that if you were actually at level 20 you'd have both items.

If you were putting everyone at level 1, I'd argue the differences in stats at that level are significant enough that they would skew the values much more inaccurately.

As for cost deterring you...I can understand that, but...in real-life situation, tell me there aren't PLENTY of times in-game when you've got just enough to complete The Executioner, but instead of backing, you're in a fight, and you either get a kill or an assist or two...or you're getting the Gold Fury...or you're staying out because you need to defend a tower...or you're staying out because you've got a great opportunity to PUSH a tower. And then tell me that 350 gold is a huge difference.

Only time that cost difference really has an effect is SPECIFICALLY when you're backing JUST as you have enough gold to get Exe but not Qin's.

SmiteFire & Smite

Smite is an online battleground between mythical gods. Players choose from a selection of gods, join session-based arena combat and use custom powers and team tactics against other players and minions. Smite is inspired by Defense of the Ancients (DotA) but instead of being above the action, the third-person camera brings you right into the combat. And, instead of clicking a map, you use WASD to move, dodge, and fight your way through the detailed graphics of SMITE's battlegrounds.